The present disclosure relates to information processing systems, and more specifically, to memory systems including a nonvolatile memory.
As mobile systems and various applications have been developed, flash memories (a type of nonvolatile memory) and memory systems controlling the flash memories are increasingly desired. Although a flash memory is capable of storing a large amount of data information, it has the drawback that the time required for reading and writing the data is somewhat long.
This disadvantage of the flash memory can be solved by a buffer memory. For example, data from a host is stored not in the flash memory directly, but in a buffer memory first. Then, the data stored in the buffer memory is read and the read data is stored in the flash memory. Similarly, the data read from the flash memory is not transmitted to the host directly but to the buffer memory first. Then, the data stored in the buffer memory is read and the read data is transmitted to the host. This transmission method may improve performances of the memory system and the information process system (e.g., mobile application) including the same.
This memory system, however, has the following problems. At booting, the data stored in the flash memory must be copied into the buffer memory, such that the memory is used ineffectively. In addition, an additional mode (e.g., a demand paging mode) should be applied to copy the data of the flash memory into the buffer memory. This causes a software burden to the system and degrades the entire performance of the system including the memory system.